Screenings
August 27 21:45
DEBATOUN GUESTHOUSE
Fire in the Mud
Portugal, 2023, 119’
in Bissau-Guinean Creole w/Arm.Eng. subtitles
Directors: Catarina Laranjeiro, Daniel Barroca
Producers: Rui Ribeiro, Ansgar Schaefer
Cinematographer: Daniel Barroca
Editor: Daniel Barroca
Sound: Dídio Pestana
Production Company: Kintop
Unal is a village of rice producers whose inhabitants played a crucial role in Guinea-Bissau’s liberation struggle against Portuguese colonialism. They were the first to engage in the armed uprising, mobilizing their ancestral spirits, the Irãs – the natural land-owners to whom they pay reverence – into the guerilla. Still today, every gesture of the rice cycle – from plowing to harvesting – is haunted by memories of the war. A trauma that is also inscribed in their present-day rituals, bodies, landscapes, and techno music.
Awards
INATEL Foundation Award for Best Film Dealing with Cultural and Traditional Practices as well as Intangible Cultural Heritage, DocLisboa, Portugal, 2023.
Catarina Laranjeiro
Born in 1983, Catarina Laranjeiro is a visual anthropologist holding a Ph.D. in Post-Colonialism and Global Citizenship. In the last ten years, she has researched the relationship between cinema and cosmological images during the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau, also part of her master thesis short film Pabia di Aos (2013). At the same time, she led and participated in several projects interlacing anthropology, cinema, and visual arts. Currently, she is conducting a six-year research project about vernacular film production in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and their diasporas in Europe.
Daniel Barroca
Born in 1976, Daniel Barroca works in the intersection between fine arts, film and historical anthropology. His current Ph.D. research is focused on the afterlives of war images in Portugal and Guinea-Bissau. He is the author of expanded cinema installations like Soldier Playing with Dead Lizard (2008) and …a hazy and confusing landscape (2009). He was a resident artist at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; Home Workspace Program, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut; and Open Sessions, The Drawing Center, New York.
Joint Filmography
Fire in the Mud (2023).